This invention relates generally to protective circuits for protecting data, particularly to a protective circuit for protecting hard disk data arranged between a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and the motherboard in the form like an Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface.
A protective circuit for protecting hard disk data is usually made in the form of an interface card and plugged in an Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) slot or a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slot. The measure of the protective circuit is more or less concerned with the operating system (O/S) set in a hard disk and is mostly limited in intercepting the interruption instruction INT 13 of the widely known Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) chip(s) lying on the motherboard for operating a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Therefore, a protective circuit based on Microsoft operating system may not be compatible with that of Apple series, namely, the protective measure is somewhat dependent on an operating system. Besides, a user has to install a related driver in addition to a conventional protective circuit, which cannot function anymore when the driver is damaged or disabled.
The primary object of this invention is to provide a protective circuit for protecting hard disk data, which is located between a motherboard and a hard disk (HD) drive and is irrespective of any operating system or driving program.
The protective circuit should comprise:
a first HD coupling device connected to a hard disk port of a motherboard;
a second HD coupling device connected to a hard disk;
a HD signal processor coupled to: the first HD coupling device, the second HD coupling device, and a microprocessor;
a random access memory (RAM) connected to the microprocessor;
a nonvolatile semiconductor memory having program codes for switching a read/write instruction of the hard disk port on the motherboard with respect to the hard disk from a main data space to a virtual data space thereof; and
the microprocessor for running the program codes.
In case the data stored in the virtual data space are damaged, the protective circuit of this invention can be applied to recopy the data in the main data space to the virtual data space to revive the latter.
For more detailed information regarding this invention together with advantages or features thereof, at least an example of preferred embodiment will be elucidated below with reference to the annexed drawings.